The Sandy Hook Lighthouse was built through the efforts of New York merchants frustrated with the loss of valuable cargo in shipwrecks. / Mary Frank, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press

by Kathleen Hopkins, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press

by Kathleen Hopkins, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press

SANDY HOOK, N.J. -- It was on a Monday when the Sandy Hook Lighthouse first lit up the night sky to guide merchant ships around the Sandy Hook peninsula into New York Harbor.

The 103-foot stone tower, the fifth lighthouse built in America and one of 11 in the 13 original British Colonies, survived an attack in the American Revolution and lasted centuries more to become the oldest standing operating lighthouse in the United States.

The lighthouse's actual anniversary was Wednesday. Its original whale oil lamps first were lit on June 11, 1764, said John Harlan Warren, a spokesman for the Sandy Hook Unit of Gateway National Recreation Area, which is operated by the National Park Service.

"This is the true, 250th anniversary of the lighting of the lighthouse," Warren said Wednesday, while bringing news reporters on a tour of the iconic structure.

"It's the oldest, surviving lighthouse in the United States," he said.

The Boston Lighthouse was the first one built in the Colonies, dating back to 1716. The British Army blew it up in 1776, and it was rebuilt in 1783, said Tom Hoffman, park historian for Sandy Hook.

The other lighthouses in the Colonies that preceded Sandy Hook's but that have not survived in their original form were Brant Point Lighthouse on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts, Beavertail Lighthouse at the entrance to Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, and New London Harbor Lighthouse in Connecticut, Hoffman said.

The Sandy Hook Lighthouse came about through the efforts of 43 New York merchants who, frustrated with the loss of valuable cargo in shipwrecks on the shallow sandbars around the hook in 1761, presented a petition to the acting royal governor in New York asking permission to build a lighthouse, Hoffman said. They received permission to hold a lottery that would raise 1,500 British pounds, of which 750 funded the purchase in 1762 of four acres of land on which the lighthouse was built.

Construction started that summer, but another lottery was held the following year to raise more money to complete the project, Hoffman said.

"We consider it being completed when you light it up for the first time, and that's (250 years ago) today," Hoffman said on Wednesday, at the site.

The lighthouse was prized during the American Revolution because of its location at the entrance to New York Harbor, but it fell to the British.

"This is important for the British because they wanted to stage an invasion of New York, and they needed a lighthouse," Warren said.

It survived an attempt by American patriots to destroy it, he and Hoffman said.

On June 21, 1776, American revolutionaries landed in Spermaceti Cove on Sandy Hook with two hand-pulled cannons, Hoffman said.

"Under cover of darkness, the boats come with two cannons," Hoffman said. "They find a sandy road and try to sneak up on the lighthouse to destroy it."

The troops, led by Lt. Col. Benjamin Tupper, ordered the artillery to "play" as they met with fire from a British armed guard defending the lighthouse, as well as from two British frigates in Sandy Hook Bay, Hoffman said.

"We bombarded the tower for over an hour but could make no impression," Hoffman said, explaining that the cannonballs were "too small to do the job."

"This remained a strategic location to protect New York Harbor from invasion by sea," Warren said.

The lighthouse remained under control of the Army until Dec. 31, 1974, when it was turned over Sandy Hook to the National Park Service.

"It's been in federal hands since the Washington administration," he said.

In 1857, the lighthouse was refitted with a Fresnel lens, which had revolutionized the lighting of lighthouses. In 1863, damage done to the lighthouse in the American Revolution was repaired, Warren said.

"Not only is it still standing and in good shape, but it's still in use," Warren said.

The tower itself measures 73 feet, and with the dome roof, it stands about 98 feet, Hoffman said. With a lightning rod, it measures 103 feet to the top, he said.